Sustainable tourism refers to the kind of tourism that gives importance to local people with invaluable opportunities to grow and prosper through tourism along with the tourist, cultural heritage, and the environment. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tourism sector has been immensely impacted and most of the tourism spots are still struggling to get back to normalcy.
The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has revealed that 100 to 120 million tourism jobs are at stake due to the restrictions created in travelling by the deadly virus.
In such a situation, it is of utmost importance to have a sustainable tourism development approach to emerge from the current situation. Sustainable tourism has always been striving to conserve resources and preserve local as well as rural cultures and traditions. The core concern of sustainable tourism is to have active participation of rural communities at tourism destinations. It is important to have strong advocacy for active involvement of local populations to achieve sustainable tourism. Practically, in the process of sustainable tourism development, local communities living in the rural areas should directly get benefit from the initial phase to the final phase.
It may be mentioned here that since 1980, the 27th of September has been celebrated as the World Tourism Day to promote consciousness among the international community of the significance of tourism and its social, economic, political and cultural value. Continuing the same, this year also the UNWTO is going to celebrate the day with the theme of “Tourism and Rural Development.” Many youths and women have been involved in the tourism sector for their livelihoods. Considering this, the UNWTO has given paramount importance to link tourism and rural development for better economic upliftment.
Development Communication through Information, Education and Communication (IEC) has a very pivotal role in bringing out sustainable tourism development. Human behaviour has always reflected on their work and decision making process. Through using IEC tools, we can effect behavioural change among the local stakeholders to implement more sustainable activities to long term gain from the local tourism products and services. Capacity building among local community can generate and initiate a system that enables them to gain skills, exposure and experience for income generation through local tourism.
Moreover, effective use of communication tools has utmost importance in selling out the products made by local artisans to visitors effectively and positively. For a better sustainable tourism development, the local stakeholders along with NGOs must be allowed to equally participate in the decision making process as well as take responsibility to adopt environmentally, socially and economically sustainable behaviour and practices along with promotion of local cuisines, culture and handicraft in tourist localities. To achieve such sustainable behaviour and practices, the communication process in the form of IEC can build awareness of these responsibilities and persuade stakeholders to adopt sustainable practices and which eventually benefit their long term well-being.
The Ministry of Tourism, Government of India has launched various innovative programmes for educating and empowering the local community in the line of sustainable and rural tourism development. The programmes aim to promote rural tourism as well rural development as 60 percent of Indians lives in villages with their flourishing culture, tradition and heritage. The ministry had, in the recent past, launched a magnificent coffee table book on rural tourism called “Explore Rural India” to give momentum to the Explore Rural India campaign in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme.
The campaign has a goal to bring out dying heritage and culture from the nooks and corners of rural India by developing potential tourist destination spots across the rural hinterland of India. The book and campaign has a thrust to promote and preserve various forms of art and craft by enhancing earnings of the local people. To prepare the book, the government had involved the village communities by giving appropriate education and training as per the industry’s demand. The campaign got a huge response from foreign tourists and the ministry later extended the programme to 103 more village spots from its initial 36 selected spots.
Another programme unveiled by the ministry is ‘Swadesh Darshan’ with an aim to leveraging tourism as a force multiplier for stimulating the rural economy and for giving an opportunity to tourists to explore the scenic beauty of rural India.
In 2008, the Tourism Department, Government of Assam had, for the first time, implemented the “Assam Tourism Policy” where it had framed six broad objectives and among those, two objectives had clearly focused on sustainability and to promote awareness among people on sustainable issues. Subsequently, in 2017, the state government had released the “Tourism Policy of Assam 2017” to build a global brand ‘Awesome Assam’ for a period of 5 years, i.e. up to 31st December, 2022. The ongoing implementing policy has given preference to Responsible Tourism (RT) in the line of Sustainable Development Goals, 2030. Moreover, the policy has committed to implement community involvement in tourism through various initiatives like facilitation of Community Involvement Tourism, Entrepreneurship Development Programme (EDP) to nurture local entrepreneurs, mapping of disappearing local handicrafts and art work for better promotion. But, it may be noted here that the sustainable tourism practices are at a nascent stage in the state and the rural population is still not getting enough employment opportunities from the tourism sector.
Initiatives as per the requirement of sustainable tourism development have not largely been seen in Assam as the main problem lies in less local population participation at tourist destinations. Local people’s involvement is very limited in government funded projects at a tourist destination. Assam tourism industry has vast numbers of stakeholders with their different and sometimes opposing interests and agenda. It is of utmost importance to make aware the notion of sustainable tourism among stakeholders of tourism industries. For this, the multiple stakeholders at both official and local levels must be able to understand the core concept of sustainable tourism development for long term benefit of tourism industry. They must articulate their opinions, identify proposals and network effectively with one another.
Sustainable tourism development choices must balance between local needs, private sector, host communities and the tourists.
The unprecedented increase of wildlife crimes like poaching and illicit trade of animal skins in and around the national parks of Assam, especially in Kaziranga National Park (KNP) and Manas National Park, has been hampering socio-economic development of the state. Wildlife tourism can be an effective measure to tackle wildlife crimes.
Through wildlife tourism, local population can also be engaged in anti-poaching projects or they may be involved in strategic nature conservation projects which would also contribute in creating job opportunities for rural youths. As wildlife tourism has its own economic importance in making sustainable tourism development, the tourism policy maker of the state must give importance to reinforce the role of tourism in skirmishing wildlife crime.
Illegal destruction of forests for development of hotels for tourists near KNP has severely degraded the environment. Barren lands can be developed for various leisure activities by exploring the rich bio-diversity of the region without causing environmental degradation based on ‘eco-tourism’, which is closely aligned to sustainable tourism. Instead of that, those areas have been used as picnic spots and every year the picnic goers have destroyed the natural spots by leaving behind plastic waste. The need of the hour is to have a proper and achievable sustainable planning in place to stop those unhealthy practices by involving local population.
The tourism policy of the state has scope to form Local Management Committees (LMC) with Gaon Panchayat members, local NGOs, Self Help Groups (SHGs), local stakeholders and tourist wardens to monitor the cleanliness, hygiene, maintenance, waste management of tourist properties and at picnic spots. It is indeed a welcome initiative taken by the tourism department. The concerned authority needs to monitor the success of forming LMCs.
Hence, it’s high time to comprehend the importance of sustainable tourism development in upgrading rural economy and rural infrastructure for an inclusive tourism approach.
(The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.)